All Work And No Play Makes You A Candidate For Stress

JAFFE

Did you hear the one about the guys who wanted to start a Workaholics Anonymous group?

They were all too busy working to attend the meetings.

Ba-dum-bum.

But seriously, folks, that's exactly what has been happening in the Lehigh Valley, where organizing efforts began last summer. Meetings have been irregular, largely because participants can't always get away from the job to get to a rap session. At its peak, the group has had seven participants; last week, when it met in Boyertown, there were four people at the meeting.

I was one of them, attending primarily as a journalist but with my curiosity piqued because of work habits that might qualify me for membership. For example, I would answer "yes" to about half of the questions Workaholics Anonymous uses to determine a workaholic (to see how you would score, answer the questions in the box on this page).

The three confessed workaholics I met all appear to be normal guys. Passing them on the street or in the mall, you'd never guess that they might not have slept the night before, that they spent every waking hour focused on their job or that they were likely to have forgotten what they did yesterday, having blacked out entire blocks of time.

What was easy to anticipate was that all three had more problems controlling their workaholic tendencies in times when money is tight.

Like now.

"I bet there are dozens -- hundreds -- of people out there in the Lehigh Valley who are going through all of the same things, and who are feeling extra stresses because of the economy," said Jim, the group's organizer. Like all groups that either follow or have adapted the "12 steps and traditions" of Alcoholics Anonymous, the worker's group insists that all individuals remain on a first-name basis with the media.

Given the current economy, chances are that Jim's estimates on the number of workaholics is probably low; workaholic behavior is brought on by a number of factors -- money and resultant work-related stresses chief among them.

Despite this, there are only 50 Workaholics Anonymous groups in the world, many of which are in the same start-up stages as the Lehigh Valley group.

"The whole idea here is attraction, not promotion," said Jim. "We want people who want to join us, who want to discuss what is happening in their life or who want to know they aren't alone. It's been difficult getting regular meetings because everyone is so busy; that's funny, but it's true."

When the hourlong meeting broke up last week, members decided to try to move future meetings to a more centralized location in Emmaus. All said they hoped to attend the next meeting; none was sure he could make it -- work might get in the way again.

But all agreed on the need to meet again, on the desire to discuss their work stresses with people who could understand, be sympathetic and supportive and yet be removed. When one individual would justify workaholic behavior, another might challenge it; when one would verbally surrender to a situation, another might offer a solution.

There were discussions of burnout, scheduling time, finding ways to get away from the telephone and the fear that children would inherit the work habits -- and stresses -- of parents.

It was a quiet meeting, one where people from different professions seemed to understand the pressures others face in trying to delicately balance work and play, business and home life.

Workaholics Anonymous, founded eight years ago in New York, offers a number of "tools of recovery," most of which are common-sense rules for maintaining a good perspective on how to work hard without letting work become the dominant focus of life.

Among those tools are:

*Prioritizing. "We decide which are the most important things to do first. Sometimes, that may mean doing nothing. We strive to stay flexible to events, reorganizing our priorities as needed. We view interruptions and accidents as opportunities for growth."

*Substituting. "We do not add a new activity without eliminating from our schedule one that demands equivalent time and energy."

*Underscheduling. "We allow more time than we think we need for a task or trip, allowing a comfortable margin to accommodate the unexpected."

*Concentrating. "We try to do one thing at a time."

*Playing. "We schedule times for play, refusing to let ourselves work non-stop. We do not make our play into a work project."

There are plenty of people in the Lehigh Valley business community who, when asked how things are going, are quick to respond with a perfunctory "workin' too hard."

Those people ought to sit back and evaluate whether that statement is true. Whether or not they consider themselves workaholics -- I, for one, do not think of myself that way in spite of my work tendencies or my answers to the questions -- attending a meeting might be worthwhile.